Homework 1: Due at recitation section, Jan 29-31, 2008.

Homework 2: Due at recitation section, Feb 12-14, 2008.
      Answers to Homework 2

Required Reading for the week of Feb 10-14, 2008:   101 uses of a quadratic equation.

Required Reading for the week of Feb 26-28, 2008:   Sidelights on the Cardan-Tartaglia Controversy.

Homework 3: Due at recitation section, Feb 26-28, 2008.
      Answers to Homework 3

Homework 4: Due at recitation section, Mar 18-20, 2008.

Required Reading for the week of March 17-21, 2008:   Wikipedia article "Countable set", 1-3.

Required Reading for the week of March 24-30, 2008:   Beyond Infinity: Georg Cantor and Leopold Kronecker's Dispute over Transfinite Numbers
   Click on this link and then on "Download the thesis". This text is an undergraduate honors thesis from Boston College which is a readable and interesting philosophical analysis of the whole dispute. Pay special attention to part III.

Required Reading for the week of March 31-April 4, 2008:   Robber barons and politicians in mathematics: a conflict model of science.
This article is a fascinating analysis of the historical significance of mathematical conflict, covering and interpreting several of the major disputes that we have already discussed.

Homework 5: Due at recitation section, April 1-3, 2008.

Homework 6: Due at recitation section, April 22-24, 2008.

Required Reading for the week of April 7-11, 2008:   Alan Turing's biography.  Scroll halfway down the page and read the 8-page biography. You may also enjoy clicking on various parts of the scrapbook.

Required Reading for the week of April 14-18, 2008:   Enigma and the Code Breakers. Read the different sections of this light but fascinating introduction to ancient and modern codes and code-breaking, culminating with the Enigma code of WWII.

Required Reading for the week of April 21-27, 2008:  
(1) Who was Phillipa Summers?   Skip the 5 first paragraphs of this text, which are a commentary of a play by Bernard Shaw, and start directly with paragraph 6, which begins "On 9 June 1890..." (Ignore the mysterious reference to an itinerant brothel keeper, which refers to the Shaw play.)

(2) The new mathematics: A lecture by Professor Bieberbach.   Download the pdf version of this text. Skip the article on lime and strawberries, and the one on spiraling in trees, that start this text, and go straight to the commentary on the Bieberbach lecture. Before reading this article, it would be advisable to check out a short biography of Ludwig Bieberbach, which will explain the attitude that produced his theory, together with biographies at the same site of Jacobi, Landau, and any others that may interest you or clarify the contents of the article.